This is analogous to what happens to civilizations. One group carves them out of the wild; we could call these “creators.” Then others show up or emerge through the process of genetic expression which produces some excellence, mostly the same, and some errors. Errors compound. This new group, which we might call “participants,” are not the movers and shakers the creators were. They are there for the easier living and will contribute only what they are compelled to.

Over time, the society changes its policies and rules to accommodate the participants, who are less disciplined and moral in personal behavior and also more random in their activity. Lacking the guiding spirit of creators, they tend to focus more on the personal, sensual and immediate. The leaders of the society shrug: the participants outnumber the creators. As a result, like a business, that society panders to the audience it has instead of the audience it needs.

But the tipping point is long in coming. People went to MySpace because the audience was there; if they wanted to promote a band or idea, all of the fans or readers were there. Even as the writing of collapse is on the wall, more people pour in. The leaders nod sagely and think their strategy is working. Their bank accounts do not lie, after all… but among those, the smart ones take the money and run. They get out because they hear the sound of crumbling.

In the same way, a dying society produces leaders like Angela Merkel and Barack Obama. Their goal is to be as popular as possible so they can gain wealth and fame and escape the dying society. As it runs itself into oblivion, they will be living in some paradise for the rich where private security protects them from the chaos. They will have used their home society as a means to the end of their own power, and then escaped the consequences.

The participants will throw up their hands. Everything seems to be bad all of a sudden. Slowly, they will begin leaving. If they are on a social media site, they will go to whatever new one their friends are using. If they are in a dying civilization, they will emigrate. The only people left watching the stove will be those with no other options, in other words, the lowest rungs of the participants.

And so the old social media site will resemble a third world nation: a mass of people behaving badly, with a few increasingly powerful tyrants watching over the herd to prevent the worst abuses, and allowing these people the freedom to behave badly on a daily basis. No one beyond the borders cares anymore. They have moved on, and the drama is complete.

Comparing facebook to myspace or frindster is like comparing a Ferrari to a Pinto. Facebook has over a billion loyal users, as well as Instagram and its hundreds of millions of users. It also has a major adverting platform, and Facebook generates more traffic than most sites on the internet combined. Facebook is almost becoming the internet. For most people, To avoid the reach of Facebook and Instagram would involve going offline.

If someone can figure out a way to make a decentralized social network that functions well and is useful to what Brett is calling “the creatives”, who will value the ability to use it without restriction or oversight, then a Facebook exodus will begin.

It will likely be a slow decline due to their huge user base and auxiliary tools like their Messenger, which give Facebook a lot of momentum. But everything has an end, and while there’s undoubtedly a lot of clever programming and design to make it work, the only really special thing about Facebook is that most people are already using it, and that can change. Everything decays.

There you go. An economic recession sans bailouts would give us a well-needed Darwinian Flush. I firmly believe the old economic “panics” of the 19th Century served a sound ecological purpose. They built a Trumpian Wall to protect us from stupid.